


Collection of birdies

by Hazazel



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Coffee Shops & Cafés, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Final Haikyuu Quest, F/M, Fluff, Other Additional Tags to Be Added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-25
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-09-27 06:33:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17157023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hazazel/pseuds/Hazazel
Summary: A collection of short bokuyachi stories for my friend luci.1 - university AU2 - coffee shop AU3 - fantasy au4 - final hq quest au





	1. drawings and plumes

**Author's Note:**

> hellooooooo this is for luci (ily) but i hope everyone will enjoy

Hitoka freezes. This, this isn’t good. To understand just how bad it is you need to flash back to three years ago, when the Tokyo Volleyball Training Camp was taking place and when Hitoka, because she is clumsy and shy, managed to accidentally throw an entire plate of watermelon wedges on Bokuto Koutarou From The Top Five Teen Players Of The Entire State Of Japan. And then run to her room and avoid him until the training camp was over.

There’s also the time she fell in his arms, the time she threw up in front of him after getting out of the bus, that time her stash of water bottles crushed his foot… The list goes on.

She hasn’t really seen him since, being in the bleachers and all that, so she’s been good at avoiding him. Yes, even in her third year later when he paid a surprise visit to Hinata to congratulate him on making it to the nationals.

He really had to be her roommate for this year, didn’t he.

 

* * *

 

Koutarou is absolutely sure he’s intimidating. He makes interns shy at his company, cashiers, dogs, even Kenma. But really, this is a bit too much. This girl – he remembers her from Karasuno, she’s Yacchan – is catatonic and could crash on the ground with the smallest gust of wind.

“Hey, Yacchan – you ok ?”

She weakly answers, words unintelligible, before sitting down on the couch.

“When Hinata told me he’d found me suitable roommates, I wasn’t expecting you,” she eventually says.

“You go to Jutendo ? Oh heck, we need a manager, cool !” he exclaims, because Natori-san is okay but she’s not cute and she’s not nice.

“I do,” she faintly says.

“How neat,” he says. “Oh, Oikawa should be here soon, I gotta clean our room.”

It’s mostly an excuse to give her some space, but he plans on coming back a little later to help her unpack.

She’s cuter than he remembers.

 

* * *

 

“Shouyou,” she hisses in the phone. “You planned this on purpose.”

“Whaaaat ?” he says. Fake emphasis and all. “I totally didn’t !”

“You told me there would be Oikawa, Ushijima and their roommate, I thought they would be someone I don’t know ! Not-”

“Bokuto-san likes you, ok ? He thinks you’re adorable and he doesn’t mind. Well, the catastrophes.”

Hitoka whines, and flops on her newly set up bed. It’s true that Bokuto helped her unpack, while Oikawa watched and commented on everything.

“I’m gonna die.”

“Hitoka !” Shouyou says, and there’s a hint of panic in his voice. “You’ll be okay though right ? I didn’t mean to send you to your death !”

“I’ll be fine,” she sighs. “Just don’t do stuff like that again.”

“Sure,” he promises, and then he puts the phone on speaker to let Kageyama have a word.

 

* * *

 

Lunch is boring because he takes it in the Sports Science classroom, but dinner is the best. Koutarou really thinks there’s nothing better than munching on some food next to your friends, chattering about nothing and laughing about everything.

Yacchan is an unusually quiet presence, even more so than Wakatoshi, but it’s ok, she _is_ rooming with three intimidating people. Oikawa even more so, it turns out, because he decided to pester her for art lessons and now he won’t shut up about it.

She studies sports science as well, to become a professional manager, which is definitely cuter than it should be. Everything about her is truly adorable, like the way she freezes when her phone rings and the little jumps she makes when Bokuto enters the room. These things are also slightly worrying but it’s ok – it doesn’t seem to be out of genuine fear more than out of sheer surprise, so she’ll slowly get used to them.

Right ?

 

* * *

 

Hitoka doesn’t think about drawing so much anymore, but when she needs to calm down, it’s still one of her go to activities. She’s been absorbed in a portrait of her roommates – “Familiarise yourself with them !” Shouyou said – when someone coughs and she jumps.

“Yacchan !” Oikawa says. “Dinner time !”

He doesn’t ask to see what she’s been drawing, which is a relief, because it’s far from finished and she doesn’t think they’d like it anyway. She quickly sweeps up her pens and paper, and she gets to the kitchen area where the table is. It’s Bokuto’s time to cook, and he usually makes surprisingly traditional dishes. Tonight is okonomiyaki, which she hasn’t eaten in a while. She wonders what Bokuto put in his…

It turns out to be delicious. Filled to the brim with amazing food, she beams at him, finally letting her guard down a little, and Bokuto beams in return.

 

* * *

 

A sheet of paper slips under the door, and Koutarou startles up. He hears a faint “Don’t be upset !” before a pitter-patter of feet scrambles away from the door. It must be Yachi, then.

He gets up to see what she gave him, and his smile is instantaneous. It’s a drawing of him, Oikawa and Ushijima, sitting down on the couch and watching a movie. Yachi is there too, in the form of a craw perched on the armrest, and the drawing says “Thank you for accepting me”.

“That’s so cute !” Koutarou yells, hoping Yachi can hear him.

 

* * *

 

Her knees go weak when she sees her drawing proudly displayed on the refrigerator. Bokuto and Ushijima are fawning over it, while Oikawa pouts because he wasn’t the one who she gave it to. They all turn towards her and Bokuto, mindful of the fact she doesn’t like scary hugs, raises his arms for a high-five. She gives him one, and he directs a thousand-watt smile her way.

She feels warm all over, and finally, finally, smiles in return, content in the fact that she’s made a friend.


	2. a good night indeed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There’s a new coffee shop right next to the flower shop and Kiyoko is immediately on her case. “You should apply,” she says.

There’s a new coffee shop right next to the flower shop and Kiyoko is immediately on her case. “You should apply,” she says, “they don’t give you enough hours in here for you to comfortably pay your rent”. Hitoka wants to cry – Kiyoko is too nice, but also, she deeply regrets opening up to her senior about her money issues. If only she would swallow down her pride and ask her mother…

No. She left Tokyo and the art scene for a reason, and letting her mother bribe her back into it would be disastrous. As much as she loves her, Hitoka needs to fly with her own wings now.

“I’ll do it,” she decides, and it’s a surprise to her that a week later she gets an interview with the café. Putting on her last pair of clean socks and promising herself to do laundry no matter what, she goes on to the interview, heart heavy with anxiety. Her hair is in disarray by the time she gets there and she is running late even though she left early, but the interviewer is also late so it goes unnoticed.

It’s an even bigger surprise to find out she’s hired – she kept stuttering on the most stupid things during the interview, but Akaashi-san was very calm and it helped ease her nerves. “You can start next week,” he tells her when he calls, “we’ll email you the schedule tomorrow. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate.”

“Alright, Akaashi-san,” she says, and Kiyoko cheers in the background. “See you next week.”

He hangs up, and she is left with the half giddy feeling of freshly laundered clothes and more money to come.

 

* * *

 

“I’m Yachi Hitoka,” she tells the manager on her first day, “Pleased to meet you !”

The schoolgirl part of her adds silently “Please take good care of me”, but she manages to bite it down before the words leave her mouth. Her manager, a man with two-toned hair and a whooping laugh, bids her a good stay and shows her how the coffee machine works.

Half a shift later, Hitoka is one hundred percent sure she was never made for this. She has dropped two coffees, one on the floor and – horror – one on the customer, and she has mixed up three orders. Close to tears, she calls for a break, and heads for the backroom. Her lip is trembling as she sits down with her head cradled in her hands, Hitoka tries to breathe in deep. Should she need it, Kiyoko is only a phone call away, and she’d answer, too – she’d help.

“Hey, you ok ?” a voice says from above her.

Hitoka raises her head and comes nose to nose with her manager, his concerned face mere centimeters away from hers. The closeness doesn’t seem to bother him, and he just waits patiently for her to sniffle and say everything’s all right.

“Ok then,” he says. “I’ll be outside for a bit, come if you need me. And it’s only your first day, don’t worry about making mistakes ! You can always count on me to back you up.”

“Thank you,” Hitoka whispers, and she feels comforted by the idea that someone is there for her, but also wishes she didn’t need it. There’s no shame in getting help, Kiyoko always says, but there’s shame in needing constant help, maybe.

Though she doesn’t need constant help, she berates herself, she’s just starting her new job and it’s ok to mess up sometimes. Sometimes only – but to know if she’s truly a disaster at this, she’ll just have to wait and see.

 

* * *

 

“Thank you sweetheart !” the customer says, and Hitoka manages to smile without nervousness and only a tinge of annoyance and say, “Have a good day ! Next customer please.”

Customers in the Owlish café are nice, usually, although maybe a bit too friendly. This one gives off a dadly aura and it doesn’t bother her as much as the teenage punk who came in two days ago and called her “love”, but it’s still kind of weird to be called pet names by people she’s never seen and will never see again. This is, however, the most pressing complaint she has against her job as of now. Contrary to her catastrophic predictions, Hitoka has spent two weeks without getting fired, and is slowly adjusting to the rhythm.

Bokuto-san, her manager (she eventually remembers his name) is a mid-twenties guy, who has vitiligo (and not dyed hair like she thought), a laugh louder than the noise of the coffee machine (which is saying something) and the sweetest personality Hitoka has ever witnessed. In the span of two weeks, he has invited her twice to the nearby restaurant for “friendly dates” and hasn’t stopped complimenting her.

“You’re doing a great job,” he says while cleaning up the mess he made of the creamer. “Nice to see you !” he always greets when she arrives. “You’re really talented,” he keeps telling her, and Hitoka suspects this is a white lie made to ease her anxities.

Oh, and, he calls her Yacchan. Which is really adorable.

Hitoka might have a crush. A little silly crush that she daydreams about when she sees Bokuto-san’s broad back from the cash register, a stupid thing that she talks about to Kiyoko one night when she’s had a beer to many and she can’t keep the bubbles in.

“He’s so nice,” she moans. “He’s like. Really cute too. Personality-wise. Like a big puppy. A big baby owl. And he’s ho-o-ot.”

“You should ask him out,” Kiyoko advises, because she is wise and strong. Hitoka moans again, because “Nooo, he doesn’t like me like that.”

“If you think so.” Kiyoko doesn’t push, which she is grateful for, because her head is starting to pound and she wants to sleep. She is such a lightweight…

The day goes by uneventfully, and Hitoka mostly thinks of how she is going to juggle tomorrow’s shifts – a back to back between the flower shop and the coffee shop, which promises to be tiresome, when she hears a light ringing sound.

“Beep beep,” a voice says behind her, “time for a pause, Yacchan !”

“Did you set an alarm for this ?” she asks Bokuto-san.

“Yeah I did,” he answers, embarrassed, and they leave Yahaba and Komi to trade with the customers. The back room has become a little more homey after Bokuto-san decided that they should all add a personal touch, which makes breaks all the more enjoyable.

“Hey Yacchan, I wanted to ask…” Bokuto-san says.

“Yes, Bokuto-san ?”

“Aw, don’t call me that, you can definitely drop the ‘san’. I don’t want you to call me that when I’m about to invite you on a date.”

“Oh, sure,” she answers, heart a little heavy because he definitely doesn’t mean it like that. “What do you wanna eat for lunch ?”

“Actually,” he says, “I thought about inviting you to dinner.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” and Bokuto sounds really embarrassed, “it’s ok if you don’t-”

“Oh !” Hitoka says. “I’d love to !”

“It’s a date then,” Bokuto says, and he whoops. “I’ll come pick you up after your shift at the flower shop, all right ?”

She agrees with a fuzzy stomach, texts Kiyoko as soon as she can, and she can’t stop smiling for the rest of the day.

“You look really beautiful today, Yacchan !” Bokuto tells her when he sees her next, and she laughs.

“You saw me this morning in the very same clothes,” she answers, but she feels bubbly.

They go to a steak restaurant not far from work, and Bokuto surprises Hitoka by ignoring all the meat options to take grilled fish – “I just thought you’d enjoy steak,” he says when she asks, “and they have really good desserts.” The thoughtfulness really makes her heart light, and the evening is as smooth as expected when someone like Bokuto decides to make it good.

He walks her back to her subway stop, and then, because she doesn’t live too far, they decide to walk there. They go on in silence, and their fingers brush while neither dare hold hands. When they arrive at Hitoka’s front door, she scrambles nervously for her keys, and eventually faces Bokuto.

“I had a lovely evening,” she says at the same time he says, “I really enjoyed our date.”

They laugh, and Hitoka thinks that she’d love, really love, to do it again. She smiles.

“We’ll see each other again, right ?” she says, face crimson.

“O-of course !”

“See you soon then,” she says before pressing a kiss to Bokuto’s cheek and quickly closing the door behind her. She hears Bokuto’s disbelieving but happy laugh, before his footsteps echo away.

It was a great night indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please please leave comments and kudos


	3. skin as pale as snow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is a fully fleshed out fantasy au in my head feel free to request more

Hitoka perches on her master's shoulder, and lets out a soft coo. Her wings ruffle, and her claws dig in his velvet robe. She has taken on the form of a crow, her favourite, and her beak snips at Bokuto's dark and white strands. He is looking at a baby, his hair dark as the night, and his skin pale as snow.

“Who's this, who's this ?” she says.

“A newly born prince,” Bokuto answers, “I'm blessing him.”

“With what ?”

“I'm not in a good mood,” Bokuto says, looking tired. “And I'm all out of mandrake root. He's gonna be an angry boy, this one. Take some wildfire to tame him, it will.”

“Not nice,” Hitoka says, but she's serene. For every person there is a blessing and a curse, for every person balance makes sure the odds aren't stacked against them – or in their favour. She eagerly awaits her master's next words. What will this boy be good at ? Maybe he'll talk to animals. Maybe he'll fly, maybe he'll be a leader.

Some of the gifts are unfair, some are mundane, but they're gifts nonetheless, and would make his fortune. Should he use them right – that's the catch, isn't it.

“He'll be…” Bokuto ponders for a while on this one. Every baby who comes in for a blessing is different, and every single one unknown. Some travel from faraway countries to reach their dungeon, braving the dark forest and the creatures in its midst. The guard who brought this baby lost his whole regimen, bleeding profusely from a wound at the head, but there is always someone to bring in the child. Whoever that may be.

Eventually, Bokuto grabs a bottle – iron shavings. “He'll be like iron to the fae, should he wish so, and like iron to men, should the fae grab him first.” the shavings fall like dust on the sleeping baby, and he unconsciously raises a fist to grab the biggest ones, missing by a landslide. His skin momentarily glows a dark blue, and then it fades.

“Isn't that a bit unfair ?” Hitoka asks. His parents are the monarchs of the nearby kingdom… the very same that banned them. “This boy shall have no choice.”

“He'll come to me if he so needs it,” Bokuto decides. He cackles, his work done, and opens the door after Hitoka hides away in a corner, shy as ever.

A child stands behind it. His hair is red as fire, and his skin golden ambers, from her hideout Hitoka spies feathers in his sleeves. Fae. Definitely.

Maybe that's what her master had in mind. The boy must not be older than four, and he grabs the baby carefully, putting his tiny hand on his cheek and cooing.

“You're gonna be a beautiful boy, Bakageyama.”

“Guide him well,” Bokuto says, and he waves as the child walks over the corpse of the guard.

“Sure,” the child says, and he disappears into the night.

Hitoka fluffs up, and settles on her perch after a few minutes of flying aimlessly. “Do you think he'll come back ?”

“That's for me to know and you to find out,” Bokuto sings in mirth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't forget kudos and comments


	4. kill it

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are you awake now, little fool ?”
> 
> Where is she ? Hitoka blinks awake slowly, and sees her hat next to her face. Then a bed, on which lies Yukie – she's breathing, thank magic. Her own wounds have been bandaged, and she can feel her energy levels slightly higher than they were before she faced the-
> 
> “Demon !”

She's there. After all the battles, after losing them all, she's made it. She holds in her hands the barely-breathing body of her companion, and faces the demon head on. It laughs at her futile attempt to gather enough energy to cast a spell, and the last thing she can see before passing out of exhaustion is its smirk as she crumbles to the floor.

 

* * *

 

“Are you awake now, little fool ?”

Where is she ? Hitoka blinks awake slowly, and sees her hat next to her face. Then a bed, on which lies Yukie – she's breathing, thank magic. Her own wounds have been bandaged, and she can feel her energy levels slightly higher than they were before she faced the-

“Demon !”

“That's not a nice way to call me,” it says. She can picture it – its mouth is twisted, teeth sharp, and its eyes glow yellow. “I was once a mage like you, you know.”

“Doesn't matter – where – where are you ?”

The room is shrouded in shadows, and she can't pinpoint where its voice echoes from. It leaves her feeling vulnerable, and she hates it.

Footsteps from behind her, and then a shadow falls on her bed and she can see it properly for the first time. It's not horned, like the last demon she and her party faced, but its hair is laced with feathers and its large pupils are a sweet, golden colour. It smiles at her and she can see she was right. Its sharp teeth are made to tear through flesh like it's nothing.

“What are you doing here ?” it asks her.

“We're here to-” Hitoka looks at Yukie, sleeping in the bed besides her own, looks at her bandaged arms, and at the troubling lack of bars on the window.

We're here to kill you is what she meant to say, but the demon is supposed to want to kill them too. Why then are they both safe ? Is this some ploy to better torture them when they've healed ? It must be.

She must do it. She doesn't have a choice – if only for her deceased partners. Their faces come back to her in her dreams, and she wishes every day that she'd chosen another path, one less intertwined with suffering, but this is her life now, one she picked for herself, and she must drink from the glass til the end.

With a wave of her hand, Hitoka summons her staff. It is of iron and silver, the best two metals against the fae, and she sharpens its point with a brush of her fingers.

“My my,” the demon says, its features sharpening. “Don't pass out again, it was hard enough keeping you both alive as it is without you trying on silly little tricks.”

“For my sister,” she whispers, and she drives the staff through the demon's chest.

In retrospect, she figures it must have been too easy from the beginning. Last time, the demon was killed with magic, but it took their caster's life in the process, and the next best thing was this enchanted staff they found in a measly dungeon. Of course it wouldn't work. Of course they'd all die.

The demon barely shivers and it grabs the silver laced staff without seeming in any pain, removing it from its chest with a sigh. Its hands are clawed, fingernails sharpening into a point, and it throws the staff on her lap carelessly. Like it doesn't even care that she has her weapon back, if it can be called that.

“Now,” it says. “Will you listen ?”

She doesn't have the choice but she can and will make it as difficult for the demon as she can. Stubbornly looking down at her hands, Hitoka feels tears welling in her eyes.

“You killed me last time, with that little two-toned mage of yours,” it says. “I came back stronger. I also came back… different.”

“You came back,” Hitoka echoes. Her voice is hollow, how could it be, it _came back_ ?

“I don't think I wanna kill people anymore,” it says with mock certainty – mock, she's sure of that, it's a demon, of course it kills people. “You know, I was only like that because of… He's dead anyway. But yeah. In case you hadn't noticed, I've been staying relatively quiet since I spawned.”

“You came back,” she repeats. “And now I have to kill you, again,” 'alone' is what she doesn't say.

Yukie stirs in the bed next to hers and the demon fusses over her wounds for a while, before coming back to Hitoka. She's been staring at the staff in her hands with empty eyes, thinking, thinking.

“So, what do you say, little witch. Still wanna kill me ?”

“Yes,” she says.

“Wouldn't you like to wait a little before you try that ? Get to know me ? I'm very powerful. I can do wonders.”

“No,” she says. “I think you're evil and I'm going to kill you as soon as Yukie wakes up.”

“That I can't allow,” it frowns. The feathers on its eyebrows make it almost comical. “She's staying with Akaashi until she's healed.”

“A- Keiji ?”

“You know em ?” Its eyes spark with – jealousy ? Before returning to their golden colour. “Good, trust me a little more, then.”

Keiji left the party five months ago. Said ey wouldn't do it anymore – not without Kenma. Maybe ey got lured, maybe ey are staying here in the hopes that some day their party will arrive and they'll all kill the demon together.

Hitoka resists the urge to sharpen her staff again. She has to bid her time.

“I'll give you three days.” That's about all it'll take for her powers to regenerate. And then she'll be ready to kill it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please don't forget to leave kudos and comments !!! have a good day

**Author's Note:**

> blease comment


End file.
